Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of a high school offering linguistics courses or indeed knowing much of anything about linguistics. So writes distinguished linguist Gretchen McCulloch. After all, everyone knows that linguistics is purely an undergraduate and graduate subject in colleges… Read More ›
Teaching & Learning
The first day for all
Although the first day for faculty and freshmen came last week, yesterday was the first day when all who should be here were present at Weston High School. From where I sit, it was an especially smooth opening day. As… Read More ›
Do negative numbers exist? And why do two negatives make a positive?
A brief interchange on Facebook yesterday and today with three of my former students prompted this discussion of the two questions stated in the title of this post. It all started with this implausible claim from a reliable math website:… Read More ›
School of Rock
I really didn’t think I would enjoy this movie. “Not my style,” I said to myself. But I was wrong. Although it’s true that it is not my style, I still enjoyed it a lot. In case it’s not… Read More ›
A portal for parents
There’s an excellent article in last week’s New York Times on the downside of checking kids’ grades constantly through an electronic portal for parents. Here are a couple of excerpts: The reality, at least in high-pressure school districts, is that some parents… Read More ›
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” (Rethinking quadrilaterals)
Why on earth would we spend two whole days rewriting our Honors Geometry quadrilaterals unit? Our textbook, after all, contains a perfectly serviceable sequence of four lessons on this topic: These lessons are adequate. In the words of the standard… Read More ›
Coding in middle school math
Google Blockly? What’s that? And should we say coding or computer programming? We’ll deal with that terminological question in the last paragraph, but let me first tell you about Blockly and about the workshop we had yesterday. A group of… Read More ›
Damaged
If you’ve never read any of Lisa Scottoline’s South-Philadelphia-based Rosato & DiNunzio thrillers, Damaged would not be a bad place to start. (Note: I really like all the Rosato & DiNunzio books, though I don’t particularly recommend Scottoline’s so-called emotional thrillers. But maybe… Read More ›
Standards-based grading?
What’s wrong with grading on a curve? Or what’s wrong with grading by straight percentages? Twelve years ago I wrote a post about why grading on a curve is destructive and counterproductive — and why grading by straight percentages isn’t actually… Read More ›
Ben X (a film about Asperger’s)
Grim. Much too grim. I’m talking about Ben X, a subtitled 2007 Dutch-language movie from Belgium — a work of fiction, based on a real story. I don’t have any problem with serious films, but I just had to stop watching Ben X half-way through…. Read More ›
